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In pursuit of the strategy of building the Chair for Women’s Studies at GSISS by drawing on resources beyond its Leesburg location, I had scattered a few odd seeds in the trail of a short visit to Morocco about a year ago. At that time I was a guest of the Ministry of Religious Affairs, the Ministry of Awkaf, among a host of other participants and observers invited to attend a government sponsored international convention addressing Women ‘s Rights in Islam. (Al Sahwa University, October 28-31, 1998) Typical of such contexts, I was afforded VIP treatment, with a  car and an official companion assigned me during the visit, thus facilitating contacts and mobility. It was on the sidelines of the event that I tried to identify some elements who could be instrumental in setting up a sister center to the team I had only recently set up in Cairo earlier that summer. Of course, the conditions in which I took this initiative were entirely different, not least of which was the relatively unfamiliar setting, and the fact that here I was operating as an outsider to the system, quite unlike the situation in Cairo. This did not however prevent me from probing new grounds and doing what I could, notwithstanding the constraints. I took advantage of whatever opportunities were then availed to get to meet some of the activists and representatives of NGO’s in the women’s field: in effect narrowing down my contacts to those with an academic orientation, or with research interests more consistent with my own purposes. Out of this handful of encounters, one came to fruit, in a relatively modest, but sustained endeavor that I eventually followed up - sporadically – throughout the year. My visit to Morocco November this year, was undertaken with the intention to follow up on that initiative, and try to consolidate it.

 

This general report briefly reviews this visit, reporting on the activities and preliminarily assessing its outcome. First however, it outlines the context of the informal Women’s Research Circle Affiliate there.

 

ZAC-WSTU Maroc:

The Women’s Research Circle (Riwaq al Fihriya)

The focus of current research in the Fihriyya Circle is on Islamic religious sources, notably on women in hadith, tafsir, and fiqh: in addition to select topics like women in waqf ( Muslim Endowments), an area meant to supplement ongoing work in Cairo in a similar field. This focus was maintained partly in view of the nature of the educational system / resources in the contemporary Moroccan setting, where a polarized and sharply bifurcated system, yields a relatively sizeable proportion of female graduates in strictly traditional fields. I shall dwell briefly on this point for its implications for our prospective research and recruitment strategies in this part of the world.

On average, the Moroccan system seems to turn out a proportionately large sector of graduates who are well grounded in the tradition and skilled in accessing its sources. Compared to the bastion of classical Islamic scholarship in Egypt, al Azhar, the Moroccan traditional system has been less exposed to the liberal and modernizing trends that have left their mixed repercussions on the former. In one area however, the liberal orientation in Al Azhar has had little impact on the traditional constitution of the student body specializing in religious studies, leaving it with a predominantly male profile. Ironically, the more conservative Moroccan system sees again proportionately more women graduating from religious studies. I cannot vouch for the percentages or exact figures between Egypt and Morocco: but such at least is the impression I got from some initial observations and queries on the score. At the same time, the employment and promotion prospects for graduates of the religious track there are extremely limited, a factor which accounts for a pervasive despondent mood among them. There we get a group that is extremely deferent of learning, almost avidly insatiable, yet endemically demoralized. With current ambivalent policies of His Majesty’s Regime it would appear that very few of the graduates of that cycle of education will ever get to follow up on their religious studies, nor even to use their training on any job they may be offered in a chronically anemic market. The result is that there is a constantly frustrated and perennially under-employed pool of competence that is eager to have its talents and training acknowledged - if only to uphold morale and maintain its own sense of worth and self-esteem. It is among such elements that my bid to establish a nucleus of research into women in Islam seems to have found some of its first enthusiasts.

To complete the picture: I would like to make a few quick observations on the prospects of a research initiative in Morocco of the type engaged. The conditions under which researchers there work are extremely primitive, even by standards of other parts of the Arab or Muslim world. This is particularly the case I feel for those working in the ‘traditional’ or Muslim sector that is systematically starved of many of the modern amenities and facilities that may be afforded their counterpart in the ‘modern’ sector. The latter are well connected to sources and resources in the West  (notably in France) and to various NGOs. In addition to paucity in library facilities and book acquisitions, typical of the conventional Moroccan scene, few of these researchers have access to even typing or computing and communication facilities. In fact, one of the main problems encountered during that preliminary year I set up the team was a communications problem. Keeping in touch was one of the major stumbling blocks to any ability to follow up on developments on that front.

There are also a number of factors that lend the Moroccan setting its own peculiarity and that will need to be taken into account in planning any long term engagements with our team there. Foremost of these is a kind of centrifugal cultural geography that makes it imperative to proceed incrementally and to multiply, or to spread out, the initiatives across a number of fairly autonomous centers. This means that to get the most out of research resources there, one would need to go beyond the Rabat – Casablanca/ or Rabat-Quneitra axis, to the heartlands in Fez / Meknes, (and Marrakesh) and to the outlying Tangiers/ Oujda regions. Each of these is a center of learning with a potential in its own right, and some, as with Fez, are heir to an authentic tradition of culture and sources. At the same time, as if to underscore this special geography, one notices a certain difficulty in getting Moroccans to work together: an obstinate streak that seems to be cultural as much as temperamental. These are among the factors which may initially militate against an initiative to tap into the Moroccan turf; they would appear to hedge any such initiative with predictable constraints. Still, it is a challenge that calls for patience and prudence: it need not deflect us from our outreach intent in what promises to be, otherwise, a rich and prolific source for our area of interest.

I close this interlude with another pertinent observation on the peculiarities of the Moroccan setting and its implications for planning the general orientation and scope of the Abdin Chair. Apart from a ready pool of researchers and a rich tradition of resources, Morocco represents us with a unique constellation of forces that impinge on the history and traditions of women in the Muslim legacy as much as in the contemporary world. Historically, spanning the Atlantic-Mediterranean ridge, it is the extreme ‘western’ tip of historical Islam and has long been at the forefront of a landmark encounter with Europe, the hinterland of the Andalusian Moment and theater to its surging waves of an unfinished ‘reconquista.’ It is this continuing heritage of intense and mixed reactions that has left its impact on a tradition and its multivalent interpretations: Nowhere has this been more challenging or conspicuous than in the area of women and gender related matters. Since the range of our interest in researching women in Islam and in rethinking gender from an original Islamic perspective, the challenges that lie at the interface of the cultural encounter between Islam and the West, whether at the present, or historically, are central to our academic and intellectual agenda. This is another reason that adds to the attractions of developing our research team in Morocco into a viable nucleus we have informally dubbed as the ‘Fihriyya Circle’ [riwaq al fihiriyya] . The name evokes the memory of the founder of the Qarawiyyin Mosque (circa 225 A.H./ 900 A.D (?)), one of the earliest centers of learning in the Muslim world, antedating the celebrated Azhar, which owed its origins to the piety, vision, wealth, and will of a pioneering woman from that part of the world: Fatimah al Fihiriya. As such it is hoped to make it into another credible affiliate of the Chair, on a par with its sister circle in Cairo, the ‘Riwaq al Zahra'’ ( named after the contemporary pioneer in social medicine, a Muslim woman from Egypt of international repute known for her combination of professional excellence with humanitarian services. She is also honored in Egypt as the dean of the healing profession: umm al attiba. It is her name that graces the Chair in Leesburg, and it is natural that the Women's Study Circle in Cairo should host a 'sorority' - or a riwaq - that bears her name.)